If you were to divide Ramen into three parts it would be the broth, the noodles, and the toppings. The noodles are the bulk of the soup and crucial to producing good tasting Ramen. Preferrably I hand-make my Ramen and to be honest still don’t feel like I have it perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
To make it I mix 2 cups of flour, 2 whole eggs and lye water. Lye water help to make the noodles a little chewy which is key to good Ramen. The ingredient which causes this is potasium hyrdoxide. I have tried other things like sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) do not do that. Baking soda will make the noodles puff up and get bigger which is not what you want.
Also, do not add the lye water to the eggs. You need to mix the eggs in first and then add the lye water otherwise the lye reacts with the eggs and they do strange things. I’m sure a chemist could tell you what it all means.
If you are going to make the noodles by hand you should roll it out a little like you are making snakes.
The reason I do this is because the pasta maker is only about 5 or 6 inches wide and this makes it easier to roll out. If you have a hand operated one like this then you want to only roll it out to the 3rd smallest notch. You want the noodles to be square when it comes out.
One of the tricks to the noodles is you have to make sure the noodles have the right moisture. This cannot be underestimated. One of the reasons is that if your noodles are too wet, they will clog the machine. Below you will see two pulls of noodles. The first is a little wet, they are “wobbly” the second pull is perfect.
